On high schools.

No hurdle looms too tall for St. Ignatius standout

Herman Reeves' athletic career makes about as much sense as my NCAA bracket.

Reeves wanted to play football, so he enrolled at St. Ignatius, which didn't have it.

So he went out for track, which he had never tried, and he didn't do it until his sophomore year.

Then he specialized in the hurdles, one of the toughest events to master, and he chose it in a year when he wouldn't have an outdoor track to practice on.

On top of that, Reeves was about 5 feet 4 inches at the time, a big handicap in an event that rewards height.

Yet somehow, some way, the Wolfpack senior has become one of the state's top intermediate hurdlers. He will not, it would seem, let any obstacle stand in his way.

"He's very determined," said John Lillig, Reeves' coach in 2003. "He knew what he wanted to do and was willing to work at it."

Reeves always figured he'd be working on football. He was a standout flag football player at a South Side parochial grammar school, but he wanted to attend a coed private high school and a teacher recommended St. Ignatius.

He let his frustration over not playing football there keep him from trying another sport as a freshman. That, he soon realized, was a mistake.

"I wasn't part of a team, and it didn't feel quite right," he said. "I knew I had to do some type of sport. I'm an athlete. I like competition."

He reported for track just after Christmas his sophomore year and told Lillig he planned to be a hurdler. The coach had his doubts, not only because of Reeves' stature but also because learning the event has all the excitement of knitting.

"His height made me a little skeptical, but I was impressed with his quiet determination," Lillig said. "I tried to be positive, but I thought he'd have a different impression after a few days because the hurdles are not only difficult but also tedious."

Reeves learned his craft in the basement of a nearby church, doing mind-numbing repetitions at half speed to learn technique and instill muscle memory.

St. Ignatius' track was being resurfaced, so when the weather got better he would place a few hurdles on a dead-end street next to the school.

Other athletes had quit the event, finding the learning process too boring, but Reeves is almost fanatical when it comes to finishing what he starts.

"I've never been able to just quit something because it's hard or any stupid reason," he said. "Character comes from sticking it out when it's difficult."

It didn't stay difficult for long. Reeves became an almost instant standout in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles his first outdoor season and just missed qualifying for the Class AA state meet, an achievement Lillig called "amazing."

This success was shocking not only because Reeves was a neophyte without a track but also because of his height.

In the hurdles, 6-footers have an advantage because they can glide over the barriers and expend less energy than someone such as Reeves. That's especially true in the 110 high hurdles, in which the barriers are 39 inches high, 3 inches higher than they are in the intermediate hurdles.

"The highs require a lot of effort for Herman. He has to attack those hurdles," current St. Ignatius coach Ed Ernst said. "For him there's absolutely no room for error in the highs at all."

That's still true, even though Reeves has grown to 5-6 1/2 in the last two years. In the Chicago Catholic League indoor meet Sunday, for example, he ran a personal best of 7.9 seconds in the 55-meter highs but finished fourth. The meet did not have an intermediate hurdle event.

Reeves downplays his height and contends it's not much of a disadvantage in the 300. Lillig and Ernst don't quite buy that, and Reeves acknowledges he sometimes gets reactions from competitors, who almost always are taller than he is.

"I don't get comments, but sometimes I get looks that say, `He is going to do hurdles? I can beat him,'" Reeves said.

Those moments drive him to work harder at perfecting his technique.

"I can't make myself taller," he said, "but I can work harder and get faster."

His effort paid off last spring in the intermediate hurdles. He won the Catholic League title in the event and qualified for the state meet, where he had the 16th-fastest time in the preliminaries and failed to reach the nine-man final.

As a sophomore, Reeves had shrugged off missing a trip to the state meet because he figured he hadn't paid his dues. Missing the final a year later was a major letdown.

"I felt it was my race to win, and I let it get away from me," he said of his preliminary heat.

Reeves, who can find fault even in his best performances, is determined to avoid a similar disappointment.

"You have to push yourself farther every time whether you win or not," he said. "You have to know what you can do better."

Reeves carries that attitude into the classroom. He is a member of the National Honor Society and may attend Georgetown or Yale.

He plans to run the 400 intermediate hurdles in college, but his immediate goals are to defend his Catholic League 300 crown and finish in the top five at the state meet.

St. Ignatius, by the way, plays football now. The school started a program with a freshman team in 2003, too late to do Reeves any good.

Don't, however, feel sorry for him because he no longer feels sorry for himself.

"I don't regret football because I found track," he said. "It's fun running at top speed and jumping over some obstacles and knowing it's not an easy task. And winning is always fun too."